The French Quarter — Vieux Carré, the Old Square — is the oldest neighbourhood in New Orleans and the neighbourhood most people come to see. Despite the name, most of what you see was built by the Spanish after the great fires of the late eighteenth century destroyed the original French colonial buildings. The distinctive wrought-iron lace balconies, the coloured stucco facades, the hidden courtyard gardens — this is Spanish colonial New Orleans wearing a French name.
Bourbon Street is the loud, tourist-facing face of the Quarter: bars open twenty-four hours, live music competitions spilling out onto the pavement, frozen daiquiris in go-cups. Royal Street is its more composed counterpart — antique shops, art galleries, and excellent restaurants in buildings with finer ironwork. The real pleasure is in wandering the grid of streets between them, looking into courtyards, finding the small neighbourhood bars that haven't yet been discovered, and listening to the competing brass bands that seem to materialise from nowhere. The French Quarter is at its best very early in the morning, before the crowds arrive and the streets smell of last night's revelry.